In recent years, mobile devices (e.g. smart phones) have increasing capabilities to perform phone calls, video conferencing, web surfing, video streaming, etc. With the increased popularity and capability of such devices has come increased demand for network communications services for mobile devices. To meet the actual and projected increases in demand, operators or carriers have continued to deploy upgrades of the relevant mobile communication network technologies. The current fourth generation (4G) mobile technology, referred to as Long Term Evolution (LTE) offers increased speed and traffic capacity and continues the evolution towards packet-based types of bearer transport for all or nearly all user communications.
With the deployment of 4G-LTE as the radio access network technology, the carriers have also deployed an Internet protocol (IP) multimedia subsystem (IMS) core network as an application layer to control and/or provide packet based multimedia services via the radio access networks. For example, servers on an IMS core network may provide the signaling and control functions to support voice calls and/or video calls that utilize IP packet communications to and from the mobile devices. A typical implementation of such call services may utilize session initiation protocol (SIP), e.g. for the relevant signaling communications.
Different types of communication through a 4G LTE network may receive and/or require different levels of quality of service (QoS). Message delivery (e.g. of email) or web page browsing, for example, may provide an adequate user experience even if the network only provides transport as a “best efforts” delivery service. By contrast, other applications like video or audio streaming or voice or video calls, have a real-time video delivery component, and tend to be more sensitive to delays and/or jitter; and the user experience for such services is enhanced when the network can provide packet delivery with appropriate QoS guarantees. In other situations, even if a low QoS might normally suffice, a user may want a faster/better service that effectively requires a better class or level of QoS than the network might normally or initially grant for a particular service (e.g. if the user wants faster web browsing than the network might normally offer).
In a conventional IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network, QoS is dictated by an end user's data/voice plan with the network service provider. Generally, this QoS cannot be changed dynamically based on the end user's needs/preferences (i.e. a new service plan is needed).